Related papers: Polar Broad Absorption Line Quasars: An Open Quest…
An 11-day monitoring campaign in late 2005 reveals clear correlation in polarization between the optical emission and the region of the intensity peak (the "pseudocore") at the upstream end of the jet in 43 GHz Very Long Baseline Array…
Some rapidly variable extra-galactic radio sources show very high brightness temperatures T_B>10^{12}K and high degrees of circular polarisation (1%). Standard synchrotron models that assume a power-law electron distribution cannot produce…
We present VLBI (EVN+MERLIN) observations of a sample of three low-redshift radio-intermediate PG quasars (RIQ) with flat and variable radio spectrum (III Zw 2, PG 1309+355, PG 2209+184). Their radio-to-optical flux ratio (R) is slightly…
Reverberation mapping of nearby active galactic nuclei has led to estimates of broad-line-region (BLR) sizes and central-object masses for some 37 objects to date. However, successful reverberation mapping has yet to be performed for…
Accurate alignment of the radio and optical celestial reference frames requires detailed understanding of physical factors that may cause offsets between the positions of the same object measured in different spectral bands. Opacity in…
The remarkably strong radio gravitational lens PKS 1830-211 consists of a one arcsecond diameter Einstein ring with two bright compact (milliarcsecond) components located on opposite sides of the ring. We have obtained 22 GHz VLBA data on…
High-dispersion time-resolved spectroscopy of the unique magnetic cataclysmic variable AE Aqr is presented. A radial velocity analysis of the absorption lines yields K_2 = 168.7+/- 1 km/s. Substantial deviations of the radial velocity curve…
While amongst the most luminous objects in the universe, many details regarding the inner structure of quasars remain unknown. One such area is the mechanism promoting increased polarisation in the broad absorption line troughs of certain…
The observed variability of BL Lac objects and Quasars on timescales <1 day (intraday variability, IDV) have revealed radio brightness temperatures up to 10^{16}-10^{20} K. These values challenge the beaming model with isotropic comoving…
We have searched for redshifted absorption in the 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen toward `red quasars', which are extragalactic radio sources with a steep spectral drop between optical and infrared wavelengths. The success rate for detecting…
We investigate the correlation between rest-frame UV flux variability of broad absorption line (BAL) quasars and their variability in BAL equivalent widths (EWs) in a various timescale from $<10$~days to a few years in the quasar…
I re-examine the brightness temperature problem in PKS 0405-385 which is an extreme intra-day variable radio quasar with an inferred brightness temperature of $\sim 5 \times 10^{14}$ K at 5 GHz, well above the Compton catastrophe limit of…
We present the results of high signal-to-noise ratio VLT spectropolarimetry of a representative sample of 25 bright type 1 AGN at z<0.37, of which nine are radio-loud. The sample covers uniformly the 5100 A optical luminosity at…
We investigate correlations between the direction of the optical linear polarization and the orientation of the host galaxy/extended emission for type1 and type2 radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars. We have used high resolution Hubble Space…
Intensive monitoring campaigns have recently attempted to measure the time delays between multiple images of gravitational lenses. Some of the resulting light-curves show puzzling low-level, rapid variability which is unique to individual…
The X-ray luminosity function of distant (3<z<5.1) unabsorbed quasars has been measured. A sample of distant high-luminosity quasars ($10^{45} \leq L_{{\rm X},2-10} < 7.5 \times 10^{45}$ erg/s in the 2--10 keV energy band) from the catalog…
Based on a sample of 355 quasars with significant optical polarization, we found that quasar polarization vectors are not randomly oriented over the sky as naturally expected. The probability that the observed distribution of polarization…
Some recent results are presented about high redshift molecular absorption lines, namely about chemical abundances of elements, and in particular of water and molecular oxygen. Excitation temperatures of several molecules are found lower…
This study is focused on the observational measurement of the viewing angle of individual quasars by modeling the broadband quasar spectrum ranging from the infra-red (IR) to the soft X-ray band. Sources are selected from various published…
The origin of radio emission in different populations of radio-quiet quasars is relatively unknown, but recent work has uncovered various drivers of increased radio-detection fraction. In this work, we pull together three known factors:…